As someone mentioned above, Red Dead offers up some seriously delicious Western atmosphere. The music drew you in, the environments made you believe you might actually be riding around in an electrical copy of a real world, historically accurate Western landscape. The best part is, it was your choice whether to immerse yourself further into the game or not; you could run/gallop to the next primary mission, or 'teleport' there if you were really lazy, thus reducing the amount of time 'wasted' frolicking around in no man's land.

More importantly for me, the voice acting and in general, the cutscenes, were incredible. One memorable moment for me was when Ms. McFarlene (spelling?) was missing, and as you talked to the Sheriff to discover her whereabouts, some crazy, dirty-lookin' outlaw rode up on his steed and started blaring out demands in a magnificent hick twang. The game had me engrossed pretty much the whole way through, to the point that I actually bothered trying to unlock all the secret costumes, and obtaining as many achievements as I could.

So yeah, just my two cents, etc.